Because of bridal magazines and an emphatic endorsement from my mother, I became convinced that not creating a bridal registry was nothing short of bestial.
“If you don’t go and register this very minute,” my mother warned, “I’ll tell you right now that every present you open will be candlesticks and salt and pepper shakers. And you can’t build a home on that! If you don’t believe me, there was a very good article in one of your magazines called ‘Flatware: An Investigative Report’ that you should read. You ever try eating stroganoff with a candlestick? Have you? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Then register.”
Haunted by the vision of trying to cut into a filet mignon with a salt shaker for the rest of eternity, I grabbed my boyfriend and we embarked on picking out stemware, washcloths, casual dinnerware, and lots of things we didn’t want but could return for cash or credit, since there was a great pair of cowboy boots I had my eye on in the shoe department. In effect, the entire ordeal was nothing short of an engagement hazing/endurance test. It took us two days, rotating in shifts, to pick out all of the essential things we were going to need or risk our marriage eroding into a miserable and dismal failure. Every choice was laced with trepidation and chance. Who knew if the double old-fashioned juice glasses could be the unraveling of our love or if the villain was really the etched goblets? You never knew. You never knew. I didn’t even know the truth behind two-hundred-thread-count sheets and if three hundred was better or worse, and there I was, picking out things that were supposed to last a lifetime.
I realized I had crossed a line when I was standing in the towel department and found myself shouting across the aisle to my boyfriend—who was seeking well-deserved slumber on a bed the size of a hot dog meticulously vignetted in Ralph Lauren’s Avery Cafe bed linens—“Why are we even going through the motions of this wedding if we aren’t getting the full-size bath sheets? What is the point?”
Bridal black hole. Sucked right in. Fortunately, I was able to pull out of it after I received an invitation to a bridal fair at the same department store a week after we registered. The lure was free gifts. I figured if I wasn’t going to be a beautiful bride, I might as well get some free stuff by just being a bride in the first place, and I talked my unfortunate maid of honor and best friend since third grade, Jamie, into going with me.
As the loot was handed out, we saw one girl tackle another for a free Wedgwood gravy boat. I saw a bride-to-be and her maid of honor work an unsuspecting lone bride like grifters, trying to make her trade her Lenox crystal ring-holder gift for their package of thank-you cards. I saw a girl erupt into tears when she opened what looked like a jewelry box that really held a pen with an attachment for a big, nasty feather. And I watched all of them circle around me like raptors when I won the shower cake as Jamie held them at bay with lit aromatherapy candles she grabbed from a nearby display.
It was enough to make me go home, grab the closest wheelbarrow, gather up approximately fourteen hundred pounds of bridal magazines, and dump them straight into the gaping black hole of our recycling bin.
Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid
We had run into a snag.
Neither my boyfriend nor I had been to a church in years and had no one to marry us. Although one of our friends swore he was an ordained minister and would perform the ceremony, we changed our minds when we found out what kind of medication he was on.
After some searching, I found a minister in the phone book and made the call. Assuring me of what a great ceremony he performed (including a portion in which the bride and groom high-five each other), he then informed me that he was busy on our date and that he would refer me to one of his colleagues.
That’s how we found Ellen.
Ellen called, and told us that she ran a church on the west side of town. She suggested that we come down to the service the following Sunday to see if we liked each other. I agreed. There couldn’t be any harm in that.
On Sunday, we got up early, took showers, and made sure we were both wearing clean underwear, even if both pairs were my boyfriend’s. We ironed his shirt and got ready for church.
With the address in hand, we set off for Ellen’s place. We were both pretty hungry, though, and stopped for some McEgg thing on the way there, ordering as much as we could with the five dollars we had on us. We had finished gobbling everything just about the time we reached the street the church was on. We made the turn.
There, behind a wall of blooming oleander bushes, was a parking lot, and as we pulled into it, we noticed that the layout of the place was kind of odd. Scattered about the edge of the lot were numerous little houses, perhaps seven or eight in all, and then what was obviously a main hall. Our car was one of three in the lot.
“This doesn’t look like a church,” I said quietly.
“But it sure does look like a compound,” my boyfriend replied.
“It’s a cult,” I said adamantly. “It’s a cult, they’re trying to recruit us. It’s like Little Guyana or a Branch Davidians franchise. Great. Cult people. Our minister is a Jim Jones. ’Come, children, come, don’t be afraid.’ “
“Well, what do you want to do?” he asked me.
“I want to leave,” I answered, looking over both shoulders. “Unless they’ve already surrounded us.”
“You made an appointment with her,” he argued. “I think we should go in. You said she sounded nice.”
“Honey, you capture more cult people with honey than you do with vinegar. What do you think she should have said, ‘Hey, did you ever feel the urge to become the sixth child bride of a balding, overweight man with a perspiration problem and big pores, because I can hook you up by sundown’! You know that cult people always make the new recruits drink their own pee!” I reminded him, but he was already out of the car.
“It can’t hurt to see,” he insisted.
“Okay, okay.” I gave in. “Your choice. But if anyone hands you Kool-Aid or a loaded rifle, just back away slowly and say nicely, ‘No, thank you,’ and if you see any children dressed in fatigues, don’t say a word, just run to the car.”
We walked through the doors of the main hall, into a room about as big as a classroom. Several rows of metal folding chairs were set up, occupied by a variety of about fifteen people. In the air hung the undeniable fragrance of old coffee and nicotine residue, a sure signal that cleanliness wasn’t as next to godliness as you’d like to think around these parts. As I looked around, I had the undeniable feeling that I was the Mary Poppins of this group.
Yep. Mixed-up, brainwashed cult people. Suddenly, the high-fives seemed perfectly acceptable, even downright cool, as did the Wave or even the Jerry Springer chant, “Go Jerry! Go Jerry! Go Jerry!” My mother could handle that after we said our vows, I convinced myself, especially if we let her start the Wave.
As soon as we each took a seat, the piano player attacked the keys with the chords of “We Shall Overcome,” and instructed the congregation to come to the front of the room, hold hands in a circle, and sing. In what was clearly an invasion of my personal space, I joined hands with perfect strangers and sang what little I knew of the song, swaying involuntarily with my hands above my head, my right in the clutch of a man wearing an eye patch and my left grasped tightly by a woman missing both her eyeteeth. For all I knew, in an hour I could be married to Bluebeard and forced to follow the orders of his first wife, The Whistler.
When we very gladly and happily returned to our seats, a basket was passed around (a part of church I had completely forgotten about), and before it got to us, I was able to scavenge the thirteen cents that was left over from our McBrunch and tossed it into the collection. I didn’t feel so bad after I took a peek in the basket and realized that we were apparently the high rollers in this “church,” being that the parishioners donated what they could afford to sacrifice. Along with the bounty of our thirteen cents, the basket boasted a half-smoked GPC cigarette, an origami bird created from a gum wrapper, several Canadian pennies, and what looked suspiciously like a r
ewrapped cough drop.
The lady I assumed was Ellen stood up and began delivering her sermon. Short and squat with eyes that said she had done some hard living, she began talking in a soft voice about how people should accept other people for who they were, just like Jesus did, and, as a matter of fact, if He were to come back to Earth right now, He’d feel much more comfortable at this church with the drug addicts and over-the-limit offenders than he would in Scottsdale with the hoity-toity people eating raw fish at a sushi bar.
“A-men, Sister Ellen, the Lord is every man! Every man!” one particularly invigorated churchie stood up and proclaimed. “Every man fights his own demons, like my own enemy, cocaine!”
“And the temptation of drink!” another man yelled.
“And the crack pipe!” The Whistler barely rattled.
It was then that I understood. We weren’t in a compound, and we weren’t about to be brainwashed. No one was going to give me a gun and start calling me Tonya. I wasn’t going to drink my own pee. We were simply at a rehabilitation center. A nonvoluntary, court-appointed rehab center. For these folks, it was singing and dancing and praising the Lord or wrestling the last scrap of shit wipe from their cellmates in the Big House while using their metal feeding tray as a shield. It turns out that we didn’t need to wear clean underwear, after all. We were sitting in a meeting of Junkies for Jesus.
We met Ellen afterward, and I decided that I liked her just as long as she didn’t bring her commonwealth to our wedding for a free meal, despite the entertainment value of an honest-to-God freak show, and the fact that if Jesus chose to return to Earth, He might show up at my wedding, looking for His “every man” peeps. Then she gave me her card, which I have never, to this day, shown my mother.
It read, neatly in black and white: “Reverend Ellen, A Spiritual Solution To Addictions.”
Dead Bride Walking
I was getting married in eleven days.
I had spent the last year planning, scouting, gluing, and stressing for our wedding. Yesterday I had five months to finish getting my shit together, but this morning it transformed into a matter of hours.
I thought that I might even need to speak to a chaplain.
When it comes time to do it, I wanted to ask him, will it be painless? Will I feel anything? Will it be peaceful or will I suffer?
Will I still be worrying that the ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend, respectively at tables six and fifteen, will end up slugging it out? Will anyone take a piss in public at the reception? Will anyone have sex at my wedding? Will my mother throw anyone out for having a potty mouth? Will my missing-in-action bridesmaid actually show up? How many guests are going to bring people who weren’t invited and where do I seat them? How big is the chance that I will burst into a molten lava menstrual flow as I walk down the aisle?
Is he actually going to marry me?
What happens if he dies within the next eleven days—do I have to send back all the gifts? Will any one of the waiters be somebody I’ve slept with in a past life? Will I remember to wear underwear that day? Will my mother and I be speaking by then? Have I gained too much weight to fit into my dress? Is it going to rain?
Will I have a big pimple on my neck, or a whitehead on the side of my nose that no one will tell me about? If I end up crying like a ninny, can I do it in a way that people will think I’m choking on a chunk of cheese or some chocolate? Will our three-year-old ring bearer pick his nose and then put the treasure back, a favorite habit of his, when he’s standing at the altar?
Will the known kleptomaniac of the family try to steal the gifts, particularly the money bag? Will people I hate try to crash the reception, just to piss me off? Will the suspected retarded family member eat with his hands or use utensils? Is the chicken going to be fatty? Do I really need to shave or can I wear tights instead of hose? How much am I allowed to eat? Do I need to wear a girdle? How can I kiss my boyfriend without turning him into a transvestite? Can I light the candles without spilling wax on myself or setting my hair on fire? Is it too late to have liposuction on my chin? Have I turned into one of those beasts that have nothing to talk about but their wedding? What if I have to take the Big Poo?
Have all of the bridesmaids gotten their dresses altered? Will people who didn’t RSVP show up anyway? Does anyone know how to complete a bow tie? Do I need a dowry? Will he marry me without one? What the hell is a dowry? Does it involve livestock? My family knows nothing about livestock or animal husbandry. How about my dog? Can she take the place of livestock in the dowry? Can I use my bra for the “something old” bit? Why did I allow my mother to buy the garter? It has feathers on it and a bell. Do I really have a mustache or is it just my bathroom light? Do I look like a sausage in my dress? If anyone throws rice, I know it’s going to hit me in the eye and I’ll have to keep that eye closed for the rest of the wedding, or make sure I bring an eye patch. Have I remembered Modern Bride’s three C’s: Consideration, Communication, and Compromise?
Am I still mad at her or should I snub her at the reception? I wonder if he is bringing that awful girl? What if I fall down? Is anyone going to do the “I object!” thing or will they hold their peace? Will the groomsmen tape the words “Help Me!” on the bottom of the groom’s shoes? I’ll have nothing to talk about when this whole thing is over. Did I need to ask the Pope for permission? I forgot to ask the Pope for permission. Is it my religion that steps on the glass? What kind of glass? Does it have to be holy glass? Where do you get holy glass? Can I just use a lowball? I hope no one plays “My Love Does It Good.” Do I have to admit to any felonies now?
After the reception, will my mother have to kick an unconscious person, found lying under one of the tables, repeatedly, screaming, “Young man, it is time to go home! Where are your friends?” What happens when he finally sees me naked with the lights on? God, I’ll have to unscrew every lightbulb from now until he gets Alzheimer’s and forgets what women are supposed to look like. Did I give the Reverend the right directions and is she bringing a date? Please don’t let it be the guy swathed in army green swatting at imaginary flies or the junkie with the eye patch. If it is the junkie, though, maybe I can borrow the patch temporarily if I am maimed by the unexpected rice. What if I fart by accident? What if I fart in front of everyone? Did I invite that person? I think I forgot to invite that person. Oh God. I forgot to invite that person. What if someone gets high in the parking lot and my mother sees him? Will she call the police? Of course she’d call the police. She’s my mother.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Eleven days.
I’m a Dead Bride Walking.
“If You Get Divorced Within a Year, You Owe Your Father $35.78 a Dinner Times Two Hundred”: Words of Wisdom on My Wedding Day
The morning of her wedding, there are some things that a bride is better off not knowing.
Really, it’s true. You can exhaust yourself becoming prepared, tending to every minute detail, taking the proactive stance against any little, tiny thing that may possibly go wrong. But it’s useless.
Because there is no precaution against fate.
And it’s better when a bride doesn’t know that. When she doesn’t know that, at any second, forces she cannot understand, much less control, will swoop down from the heavens and kick her off-white, Italian-satin ass six ways from Sunday while the photographer is taking her picture at the same time.
I woke up on the morning of my wedding and embarked on my Preventative Measures Plan. If there was anything that scared me on my wedding day, it was the possibility that once I was up there in front of two hundred people and I became actively involved in vow-taking, I would be sucker-punched by an intestinal cramp that would demand an immediate escape to the ladies’ room with a commemorative book of matches in hand. In other situations, sure, you can sneak away when a doody gremlin is tugging at your colon, but good luck when you have a leading role and your part is up next, although I was somewhat prepared to muddle through. I’ve been onstage befo
re. When I was nine, my dance school put on a recital for an old folks home, and right smack in the middle of our tap-dancing salute to the theme song from The Sting, an old man pushed his wheelchair to the front row, unzipped his fly, pulled what I understood to be an uncooked sausage out of his pants, and then peed all over the floor. At that age, I was completely unaware that men could even do that, and as I stared at the puddle in front of me, my little feet kept shuffling off to Buffalo as Judy Garland’s voice shouted in my head, “Go ON with the show! Go ON with the show!” while the rest of my dance class burst into tears, walked off stage, or just plain sat down.
So to cut the digestive train off at the pass, I flipped open the box of Immodium AD, my best means of protection against The Big Poo. I popped two out of their foil bubble-pack tombs and chewed them mercilessly, then chowed down another one for good measure.
Step Two involved looking in the mirror, and what I saw amazed me. My face was clear. Absolutely clear. Although I had a Band-Aid in hand and had painstakingly constructed a far-fetched yet almost believable story about how members of a nearby killer-bee colony had expressed an attraction for my new honey-milk hand lotion (in case I had more than one zit, I could attribute the breakout to a swarm attack by the hive), I did not have a strawberry-size boil on my nose, neck, or chest that required makeup, bandaging, or immediate cosmetic lancing. My mother owed me five whole bucks.